India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi will make Bhutan, India’s all weather friend in the Himalayas, his foreign destination to visit after taking charge. But to signal that Bangladesh is ‘very high’ on his priority, he is sending External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on a visit to Bangladesh. Modi will visit Bhutan on June 14-15 and Swaraj will visit Dhaka on June 26-27. “The PM’s inbox on foreign policy is full,” said Indian ministry of external affairs spokesman Syed Akbaruddin . He said Modi’s second foreign visit will be to Japan in July after which he meets up with Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Brazil. Xi Jinping will visit India in September for a high level summit with Indian leaders. Only after that Modi will visit the US which is now all set to welcome him and stamp the visa denied to him so far. The US is trying hard to make up for being late catching up with Modi. “Modi’s priority is clearly the neighborhood and Asia,” said South Asia expert Sabyasachi Basu Roy Chaudhuri. But why is he not planning a visit to Bangladesh as yet! “Modi is a leader who wants to deliver. He will go to Bangladesh only when he is able to deliver the Teesta water sharing deal and carry through the land boundary agreement in the Indian parliament,” said a senior MEA official, but she was not willing to be named. The PM has asked his ‘team’ to start working on delivering the deals to Bangladesh , a process likely to be complex because it involves getting West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee — and some in his own party — to accept the Teesta and land boundary agreements. He has also asked them to work on some additional concessions in other areas that can be delivered to Bangladesh. Banerjee’s stand on the land boundary agreement has lately softened but BJP’s Assam unit remains firmly opposed to it. Modi is seeking to get Banerjee to agree to the Teesta deal by getting Sikkim chief minister Pawan Chamling (Modi’s close friend) to release more water on the Teesta . He is also likely to offer Banerjee a special financial package that would include a moratorium on West Bengal’s debt servicing for three years. Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra will soon meet Indian finance minister Arun Jaitley in Delhi during the pre-budget consultations, during which Modi may get Jaitley to work the Bengal deal. “Modi has been chief minister for 12 years , so he understands this Centre-State bargaining much better than Manmohan. He knows a state has to be given something to get something out of it,” said a senior Bengali BJP leader. But since all this will take a while, Modi will not go to Bangladesh until he can “give a very friendly neighbour something we have committed and not delivered so far”. “That is why perhaps he is sending Sushma Swaraj to reassure the Bangladesh leadership that all commitments made by India will be duly honoured but will take some time because of the compulsions of Indian federalism,” says analyst Ashis Biswas. “That is his style. He will not go empty-handed to a neighbor.” –bdnews24.com
